The period of inactivity has been long and agonizing for virtually everyone connected with the NHL. For Joel Quenneville, the wait perhaps has been even more frustrating, because he has yet to coach the Avalanche after being hired July 7.

July 7, 2004.

And now Quenneville faces adjusting or at least tweaking his coaching philosophy in the wake of the new NHL rules designed to open up the game, plus the uncertainty over the makeup of the Avalanche roster as Pierre Lacroix and the front office embark on the challenge of keeping the payroll under $39 million for the 2005-06 season.

“It’s a whole different challenge, it’s a whole different landscape,” said Quenne- ville, previously the longtime coach of the St. Louis Blues after serving as an Avalanche assistant coach for a season and a half following the franchise’s arrival from Quebec. “It’s creativity, however you want to term it, but I feel very comfortable with Pierre at the helm, with his experience and know-how about putting a team together. He’ll find a way. We feel we’re going to have a very competitive team.”

After the Avalanche news conference at the Pepsi Center, Quenneville said he has been part of the strategy and evaluation sessions with Lacroix as they try to set priorities in reassembling the roster, “but as far as negotiating with agents and players, I let Pierre do his thing.”

With the Blues, Quenneville was known as a detail-oriented, defense-first coach. With the re-emphasis on zero tolerance of obstruction and also the installation of new rules, including the elimination of the red line for the purpose of determining two-line passes, that would in theory give skilled teams more of an advantage – and that still seems to fit the Avs, pending their success at maintaining the roster core.

“I don’t know if I’m defensive-minded,” Quenneville said. “I think we play a game that’s a pressure game. Offensively, the players are going to have all the freedom in the world to do their thing. We’re still going to have a rhyme or reason about how we’re going to play without the puck. But it’s going to be like we’ve always played – pressure the puck. We want to get the puck back as quick as possible. That’s the philosophy.

“Offensively, the green light’s going to be there, but as a group defensively, we’re all going to have a purpose, and that’s going to be get the puck back real quick.

“I don’t think I’m defensive-minded. Maybe that (reputation) is because we don’t give up a lot of shots, but we want to get it back. You start your offense with your defense.”

Quenneville said “the whole objective” of the rules changes and re-emphasis on obstruction calls are “fewer stoppages of play, the flow of the game, speed and scoring chances. If you have a star player who has the freedom to go anywhere he wants, he’s going to find a way to get the puck in the open spaces, and those guys don’t need a lot of room to do their thing. … It’s up to all of us to make sure we educate the players, and that the players police themselves. As a coach, I don’t want a player taking a cheap (obstruction) penalty like that.”

During the lockout, Quenneville said, he got to know better the man he is succeeding, Tony Granato. In what on the surface seemed to be a bizarre switch, Quenneville was brought in, and Granato moved down to again serve as an assistant with holdover Jacques Cloutier.

“It was great being around the family in a different environment,” said Quenneville, who moved his family from St. Louis to the Denver area after getting the job. “The kids got to see their dad quite a bit, with me dropping them off to school and picking them up and getting to see my son play almost all of his games. Tony’s boy and my boy were on the same team, and that was fun. … Tony’s other boy was on the high school team we helped out with, too. So I saw a lot of Tony, and he’s probably happy to get away from me for a couple of months this summer.”

A graduate of Wheat Ridge High School and the University of Colorado, Terry Frei has been named a state's sportswriter of the year seven times -- four times in Colorado and three times in Oregon. He's the author of seven books, including the novel "Olympic Affair" about Colorado's Glenn Morris, the 1936 Olympic decathlon champion; and "Third Down and a War to Go," about the 1942 football national champion Wisconsin Badgers and the players' subsequent World War II heroism.

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